There are weeks where all your hours are dedicated to work. This week was one of those. And there are weeks when it’s worth dedicating all waking hours to work. This week was one of those.

Sure, there’s always time for some play: dinner with friends, drinks with friends and colleagues and the rewarding moments when work feels mostly like play.

Conferences engulf one in a bubble. They can be in the best hotel and environment in the word, still, the only thing you see all day long are ballrooms, conference rooms and buffet lines. In the end, you don’t even have time to appreciate the wonderful surroundings.

Conferences always have something magical: A process of stepping away from evryday, being exposed to non-everyday people, ideas and influences. It’s exhausting because you experience moments through all senses and it can overwhelm a person.

At the end of a conference that I helped to develop for the last few months, one can’t help to feel sentimental. All this hard work is now history and all that the team accomplished just a memory. While our adventure kicks into high gear now, there’s a feeling of nostalgia once a goal has been accomplished. One should always live in the moment. There is truth to that but it is a real feeling to encounter the bitter sweetness of nostalgia. I rather embrace both.

Thursday Night I reunited with the family at the main conference party. We wore cowboy outfits, ate amazing beef, drank good wine. And we line danced.

And there’s always Smores.

After the conference wrapped, we left late Friday afternoon to explore the Garden of the Gods. It was a short drive away from the Broadmoor. What a wondrous miracle in close vicinity to Colorado Springs.

I could have taken hundreds of photographs.

It was a rainy day but we caught a break, having to deal with a few sprinkles.

Sometimes words fail you.

Slippery, still climbing.

The main attraction is the Balanced Rock.

Easy to understand why.

No worries, the rock has been cemented in for a while. It won’t fall.

The sun was about set. We took the road to the Broadmoor for a last time.